Sheila Burke, executive dean of the Kennedy School of Government, offers students the wisdom she garnered during a full and varied professional career.

Experience in the arenas of health care and politics renders Burke uniquely qualified to encourage the aspirations of her Kennedy School students, particularly towards a career in public service.

"Public service is absolutely a worthy calling," Burke says.

"It, as much as anything else, is a function of who you work for, so that at the end of the day, you feel good about what you've done," she says, "and I've been extraordinarily blessed with Bob Dole and now Joe Nye, [the dean of the Kennedy School]."

In her role as dean, Burke is now very enthusiastic about overseeing the expansion of the Kennedy School with the opening of an office in Washington by early summer.

"The D.C. location will be a University resource that lets people get closer to politics, though it will not replace the outreach and advance work that we do here," Burke says.

On campus, Burke sees success in the school's efforts toward achieving a balance of divergent political views, especially with the addition of former Sen. Alan K. Simpson (D-Wyo.) as the director of the Institute of Politics.

She praises Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. for his achievements in faculty recruitment, stressing that "the diversity of interest among students [creates] a need to supplement the faculty."

Burke began her professional career as a nurse in New York, but it was her decision in 1977 to take a post as an adviser on health care issues in the office of then Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) that led to her political involvement.

She was hired by the senator in 1977 to what was to be a year-long position, but ultimately stayed on for 20 years. Burke worked with Dole through his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1996.

Although a Democrat when she came to Washington, she promptly switched party allegiances and climbed up the ranks. The first woman on Dole's staff, Burke rose to become the first female chief of staff in a Senate office.

From her years on Capitol Hill, Burke recalls with particular satisfaction her efforts to secure hospice service for Medicare patients and to guarantee for the elderly an all-inclusive range of benefits outside of nursing homes.

"Public service makes you feel like you've made a difference in people's lives," Burke says of these accomplishments.

But not all of her labor proved rewarding. Burke singles out the 1994-1995 health care debate as a "terribly difficult, frustrating" experience.

She foresees "an awful lot of shuffling around in the industry" before the nation arrives at piece-meal solutions to "the quandary of the role of managed care."